


Do you understand me?

by Clockwork



Series: Charms and Charmed [6]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Gen, Heartbreak, Legilimency, MACUSA, precanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 22:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13017201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: Percival finally returns, and everything is changed. The inevitable Grindelwald has arrived piece of this series.





	Do you understand me?

For six weeks, Queenie had gone about her life as it had been before that first meeting with Percival. She carried drinks, and unstopped the john, and she came home to Tina where they made dinner and she worked on clothing and did everything she had done before that fateful night. 

The only differences were that every night she curled up in bed, face buried against a pillow so that she wouldn’t wake Tina, and she cried herself to sleep. Then she would wake before her sister, using magic and glamour and muggle cosmetics to hide all evidence of her pain before dressing impeccably for the day.

Six weeks of pretending her heart wasn’t broken, that nothing was any different in MACUSA than it was for anyone else. Six weeks until the day she came into the building, dressed in shades of rich gray and shimmering pearl because much as she was hurting, there would be no clothes of mourning, realizing there was a different atmosphere in the air. People were excited, and more of the aurors and others wizards and witches were milling about. Pausing in the middle of the floor, Queenie opened herself up in ways that she hadn’t done in weeks. The truth of the excitement washed over her in an instant.

Percival Graves was back.

Wandering, Queenie’s determined gait moved her from one group to the next, listening to all they said and especially everything they didn’t say. He’d walked in an hour before as if nothing had happened. He’d gone straight to his office without a word. The President had been in to see him twice. Aurors were rattled by the shake up as schedules changed, and many were sent out suddenly on assignment. Everything had changed, and yet it should have been the same. Queenie could think of only one thing.

She had not received a message about his return.

Drawing a seeming cloak of indifference about herself, Queenie went back about her business. If she worked things out to stay late into the night, then that was purely business. Even as she did so the next day, and then the next. Waiting to see if her path would cross with Percival’s. It never did.

Tina said nothing, though she watched her sister with worried eyes each time Queenie seemed to find a reason to make a circuit around the building, or to come down the hallway to the aurors’ offices, passing the closed door to Graves’ office as often as she might. Pushing from deep within, she tried hard to feel things she had before. The weight of his gaze, the small messages that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Where before there had been the seeming static of magical protection, now there was a hollowness that seemed to surround not only Percival himself, but the office in which he now seemed to live. 

On the fourth day after Graves had returned, a young auror, new to the offices, sought Queenie out. 

“Come with me.”

It was all she said, giving a jerk of her head and turning on heel almost immediately to storm off with a heavy gait. Queenie rushed to catch up, following with a frown as she touched up her curls, gave a tug at her jacket to ensure that everything lay just right. Even as they approached Percival’s office, she realized that sensation in the pit of her stomach was dread and not excitement. 

Why involve a third party who might speak with others about Queenie being summoned? Why not just use her legilimency to ask her to come to the office? There were a thousand ways he might have sent for her that wouldn’t involve sending an auror of all people to track her down. 

The auror pushed the door open and Queenie stepped in without hesitation. Even if it felt like stepping into a bubble, almost physically feeling the wards that protected the office, stronger and more powerful than they had ever felt before. 

“Yes, Mr Graves?” Asked even as the auror closed the door, though Queenie couldn’t be certain if they had stepped away. The wards that made the office a seemingly null void to her gift seemed to go both ways.

Perhaps that was what was most disconcerting about being in an office where she used to love to spend her time. It was filled with the same furniture, the same carpeting and curtains. Nothing had been changed since the last time she’d been in the office six weeks prior, and yet it was empty. It was like being in a soundproof room, or someone was using the most extreme of silencing charms. Since this one not only seemed to silence the physical sounds from beyond the room, but the thoughts of everyone around them as well. It was the first time since she was little more than eleven that Queenie had experienced this sort of silence. Utterly, wholly and completely.

It was fairly terrifying.

“You made the jacket, correct?” Waving a hand to indicate the handmade tailored coat she had left for the return that should have happened nearly four weeks before. Queenie barely managed to nod mutely.

“It’s quite lovely. I’m fairly impressed,” he said, looking to her without a smile. He had made no move to stand from his desk, nor was there tea anywhere apparent in the room. 

“I… I’m glad to hear that, Sir,” she said, frowning though she fought hard against the tears that stung her eyes. 

Nothing felt right in that moment, and the coldness seemed to radiate off Percival in waves, washing over her with an icy chill that was unlike anything she had known before. Not even from before their relationship began. Not from another human being ever. 

“Good. Now, one more thing.” 

It was then he rose from his seat, finger steepled on the desk before him as Graves leaned forward slightly, staring at Queenie with a directness that burned into her soul. Much as she wanted to blink, to still the tears she felt soaking into her lashes and dampening the rims of her eyes, she couldn’t find it in her to blink, to look away. Not from the face of a man she had known well she loved, even if they never shared the words. Not even as she finally felt the weight of his gaze in an entirely different way. As cold and hollow as the room, his dark eyes seemingly empty; bottomless pits that went on forever. 

“Should I ever feel that knocking of your magic again trying to push through into this room or into my mind, I will not hesitate to see you obliviated and banished from MACUSA and the wizarding world. A threat such as that shall not be tolerated. Do you understand me?”

The cold of the room, that horrible dark cold of his stare, none of it compared to those words. None of it came close to the way those words cut through Queenie, sliding deep into her heart and leaving it bleeding, hot and thick and painful, within her chest. 

Her mind raged against the words, angry and confused. Words forming that were little more than sound, dangerous questions, and hurtful accusations. Yet they died when they reached her tongue, unable to find the ability to vocalize the pain those words had left her with, a pain that settled into the very marrow of her bones as if each had been crushed as surely and thoroughly as her heart had been. 

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” The word was barely more than the gentle rasp of her lips brushing against one another, the air in her lungs gone to dust as if no longer needed to sustain a life that had gone so bleak.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you. What was that again?”

“Yes!” The word came out in a hard rush, straightening her shoulders as bringing her heels together with an audible click that was echoed in the snapping of her teeth. “I most certainly understand you.”

“You’re dismissed then,” he said, giving a wave of his hand. 

The door rattled in its frame as Queenie’s magic, not Percival’s, jerked the door opened. It slammed with a resounding crack in her wake. No one said a word. None of the aurors’ who popped out of their offices at the sound said a single word as Queenie stormed past. She didn’t need legilimency to feel their confusion. A confusion that echoed her own as she went straight past everyone, down the stairs, ignoring Tina’s call after her and marched straight out the door. 

Later she would return. Later she would apologize for her behavior, assured by any and all who received her words that they were unneeded. Without knowing what Graves had said, no one faulted her that moment. No one had followed either, giving Queenie her privacy and her tears. No one questioned again the relationship that most had thought would end terribly but never like this. 

Most would though question the changes. Question why Graves was so changed after his extended leave. After one auror though disappeared, and another was found obliviated to the point that food was questionable to them, no one ever questioned again.


End file.
